The Genealogy Journey

The newbie genealogist's resource for books, mags, databases, and -- of course -- any free research stuff to be found on the Internet.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Historic Family Papers and Photos: Store Them Right or Consider Donating Them

One of the genealogy forums I belong to recently talked about storing family papers. Someone stressed that you should not keep family papers in office-quality plastic sleeves. The ink will transfer to the plastic. In addition, the cheap plastic sleeves are not ph-balanced and will cause the paper to deteriorate faster.

You’ll need to spend a little bit more for archival quality plastic sleeves, but it’s worth it in the long run.

I was curious about other methods for storing family papers and photos, so I did a little searching on the ‘net:

Links for Storing Your Family Papers and Photos

Who knows better how to archive family papers and photos better than the U.S. National Archives?

http://www.archives.gov/preservation/family-archives/

Here’s a helpful article from The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies on preserving family papers:

http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/2980/
family_papers.pdf


This link has a list of companies that supply archival material, as well as additional links of interest:

http://www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/resources/leaflet/03-mar2000.html

Donating Your Family Papers

You can also donate your family papers to a repository (such as an archive, historical society, or special collections library). This article discussed the benefits of doing so:

http://www.archivists.org/publications/donating-familyrecs.asp

From my online search, it looks like many states have their own archival group. To find one for your state or country, google this:

State/County donate historic family papers site:.org

...where “state/country” is the name of your state or country. The “site: .org” will only return results from non-profit groups – those most likely to store and preserve historic documents.

I hope this has been helpful!

~Mary Kaye

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